


Safety Lines (You May Pull Me Over The Edge)

by ActiveAgression



Series: Soulmate's Thoughts Universe [5]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Feels, Kind of messed up tbh, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Terminal Illnesses, soulmate thought thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 19:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6484942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActiveAgression/pseuds/ActiveAgression
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’s wrong with you… why are you here?” he’s asked and he stares for a second, somewhat perplexed. </p><p>No one’s ever asked him that before while he’s been waiting - everyone else just attempts small talk. Ray had figured it was sort of like prison rules where you simply don’t ask how people got to this point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety Lines (You May Pull Me Over The Edge)

**Author's Note:**

> I warn, i'm pretty sure this is terrible but i kind of love it and I'm bad at endings so take it for what it is! 
> 
> Sorry about any typos or errors, i imagine there's a lot but i never pick up on them. You may notice i don't capitalise my i's. That'll be obvious throughout.
> 
> And kudos, comment, subscribe? (is that a thing?) if you want. Or not, whatever.

Ray remembers when the hospital seemed to loom over him. All of it’s 37 floors grew taller and taller as he approached and eventually the top seemed an unattainable height. Now he stares out the window and he knows it’s just as tall but he’s spent so much time in those walls it no longer forebodes his entrance. Now it’s just sort of routine. 

“You want me to come in with you?” Michael asks, hand hovering over the gearstick like he wants to do something uncharacteristic like take Ray’s hand or offer a comforting pat but isn’t quite sure how to. 

Ray laughs at him, “nah man. Done this a million times. I’ll be fine,” he assures, fumbling his seatbelt off and practically falling out of the car with the door. He laughs it off, but Michael’s not laughing. He’s just got this horrible slant to his brow and his fingers are caught in the handle of the door. They twitch and Ray scrambles to think of something that’ll make Michael stay in the car.

“I’ll be fine,” he promises quickly. He lingers for a second, so Michael really gets he’s serious and then softly shuts the door.

 

“Mr Narvaez,” his doctor begins, peering at him through little glasses that seem too small for his face. “How are you feeling today?” 

Ray smiles mildly, “just dandy doctor,” he replies in the syrupy sweet tone he reserves for his particularly nasty bouts of sarcasm. 

His Doctor’s eyebrows rise and he starts scribbling on his clipboard, “Really? Nothing too bad going on?” He asks, obviously unaware of what sarcasm even is. 

Ray snorts, “what? You mean aside from the whole dying thing?”  
  


 

He’s waiting for Michael to arrive back in the waiting room, trying to rub some of the pain out of the bones along his forearm, when a blur of movement in his peripherals snags his attention. He turns and watches some tired, frowning guy slouch into the row of seats across the room. 

He’s hot in that hot older guy way that Ray’s always liked - liked for the last five or six years anyway - and blonde, filling out his t-shirt with muscle that makes Ray’s mouth water. He’s a particularly big fan of the way the guy’s nose crooks a little to the side. It’s adorable. Ray’s never been this attracted to anything before, but there’s just something about him; this guy. Ray stares but can’t quite put his finger on what exactly it is, and then his phone buzzes in his pocket and it’s time to go.

“You okay?” Michael asks, hovering more than he means to as Ray slides into the passenger seat but all the response Ray can muster is a pained sort of grimace; he doesn’t really want to leave. 

He doesn’t know why though. 

 

Ray’s sitting in his doctor’s office when he next sees the guy. Blonde hair and soft blue fabric wander past the open door, find a seat and settle heavily into it. 

He looks worried and a little scared and a lot defeated. He looks like he needs someone and Ray almost gets up to go be that someone but then the doctor presses hard down into Ray’s words and his vision swims at the pain. When it clears again - the need to upchuck his entire breakfast fading - the guy’s gone. 

“Six,” Ray mutters before the doctor can even ask. It’s a lie but it’s not like it matters.

“Perhaps the disease is recessing,” the doctor muses, scribbling at his clipboard absently like he’s not meant to be reassuring Ray here - like there aren’t literal lives on the line. 

“No it’s not,” he mutters. 

“No. Probably not.” Sometimes he isn't sure whether to appreciate his doctor's honesty, or tell him to fuck off for being suck a prick all the time. 

 

“You know what!? I think it’s fucked!” Michael declares, stalking around his bedroom like a Jersey lightning storm of fiery reddish hair. Ray watches, amused, from his spot on Michael’s bed. 

“It’s fucked,” he agrees mock cheerfully.

“It is!” Michael insists, slamming his fist against his wall. When he pulls it away there’s a dent that didn’t used to be there. Ray considers commenting on it but then Michael turns to face him and he almost looks like he’s about to cry.

“Or maybe it’s a mercy,” Ray suggests faintly. He’s never seen Michael cry before. He’s never wanted to.

“What?”

“Maybe,” Ray says, shrugging, “it’s some form of mercy. So that no one has to live their life without their other half…”

Michael swallows visibly and loudly. “What’s happening to you is not mercy.” 

Ray finally looks away, down at the red blankets him and Michael would build forts out of when they were younger; when they were less fucked up. He can’t handle Michael being sad, he never could.    
  


Ray’s back in the waiting room, watching time go by as the clock draws closer and closer to his appointment. 

“What’s wrong with you then?” a voice interrupts from Ray’s left. He glances sharply and finds himself entranced by tattoos. They twine and twist and forge this guy’s arms into inky compasses and colourful metal. 

“What?” he asks, valiantly making an effort to draw his vision up from tattoo. The guy’s looking at him a little blearily, tiredly - in the permanent way rather than the ‘i’ve been in this waiting room for literal days’ way. Ray’s here often enough - he knows the difference. 

“Why are you here?” he’s asked and he stares for a second, somewhat perplexed. No one’s ever asked him that before while he’s been waiting - everyone else just attempts small talk. Ray had figured it was sort of like prison rules where you simply don’t ask how people got to this point. Knowledge like that gives a guy perspective. 

“Widows disease,” Ray finally spits out. He hates the name so much. Fuck, he hates the entire thing.

“Is that the one where-” the guy starts but falters. He already knows anyway, just clarifying for the sake of conversation. Everyone knows about widow’s disease.

“Yeah,” Ray replies regardless, “he’s pretty scared.” 

“Who?” 

Ray holds out his covered arm in answer, words quivering beneath the cloth in sickness. He knows without looking they still say, ‘i’m fucking dying.’ He’d know if they’d changed. 

“You’ve met them?” 

“No.” 

“Then how do you know it’s a guy?”

Ray sighs, shifts his shoulders in an attempt to reduce the aching stiffness that’s built up in them consistently over the last eight months. “I just know.” 

The guy nods solemnly, which seems an ill-fitting emotion for him - like it’s not one he wears often. It doesn’t suit him and Ray wants to brush all the tension out, though he knows it’s not all that possible in the awkward white environment that is the waiting room. It’s practically dripping with tension. 

“I’m Ray,” Ray mutters, stroking his fingers slowly down the material covering his upper thigh. It’s tough and thick and feels like something he doesn’t want to lose - the feel of his favourite jeans. 

“Geoff,” the guy responds, staring determinedly at the far wall even as his eyes flicker down to the movement of Ray’s fingers. Ray has a brief moment of elation as he realises the man beside him is attracted to him. Then it just feels like crippling pain because no one’s been attracted to him since the diagnosis. 

“You okay?” Geoff asks, concerned. 

“Well… I have trouble sleeping, unbearable pain and I haven’t had sex in so long I don’t even remember what it’s like. Aside from that…” he shrugs. 

“No sex?” Geoff asks, “I didn’t know- that- uh… it was never-” 

“They don’t really put it on the powerpoints in health class- no.” 

“So it’s a disease thing?” 

Ray snorts, “are you trying to say it’s a me thing?” 

“I don’t-”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s the meds. Hard to get hard, you know.”

“That sucks,” Geoff says.

“Yeah. It really does...  Why are you here?” Ray asks, changing the topic onto something hopefully lighter... 

“Cancer.” 

...Or not.

Ray blinks, surprised at the deadpan delivery of that one terrible word. “Fuck,” he says slowly, drawing it out. 

“Not me; my friend,” Geoff clarifies, rubbing a weary hand over his face, “it’s not looking good.”

“Fuck,” Ray repeats.

 

An hour later Geoff’s friend emerges from the swinging double doors. He looks suspiciously like that guy Ray saw a couple of days ago. 

“Your friend’s hot,” he mutters to Geoff and gets a sharp grin in return. It looks far more appropriate over Geoff’s face then the worry had. 

“Get in there,” Geoff whispers playfully at him, getting to his feet. “Ryan!” he calls, reaching over to bro hug the guy, “how was it?” 

“Fine,” Ryan shrugs, eyes casting around the room in the obvious giveaway that nothing’s really fine. Geoff looks like he wants to ask some more but knows he shouldn’t, turning around to shove Ray forward slightly. 

“This is Ray. We just met,” he introduces, only a little awkwardly, “Ray this is Ryan.” 

“Your cancerous friend,” Ray nods, offering a quick smile that turns into a gasp of pain as his words flare up dramatically. His body folds automatically; defensively - and his breathing turns wet with blood that he swallows the moment he tastes it on his tongue. When the pain fades enough and he straightens back up, he’s panting and tears have gathered mutinously in his eyes just waiting for a moment of weakness. 

He wipes them away and smiles once more at the others, remembering too late about the layer of blood no doubt covering his teeth. 

“Sorry about that; no need to worry,” he assures, doing nothing to change the worry on either of their faces. 

“What was that?” Geoff asks, hand half outstretched as a steadying limb should Ray need it. 

“Words changed, no big deal.” 

“Your words changing caused  _ that _ ?” Ryan interrupts, eyes flickering down to Ray’s covered wrist, knowing it’s the most common spot for soulmarks to occur. 

Ray nods slowly, points a thumb in towards his own chest, “widows disease.” 

“Oh.” 

 

‘He’s gorgeous,” Ray’s words now announce, hard to make out among the sooty bruises of his disease and he sits on his bed, staring at them for a full hour before it occurs to him to call Michael. 

“Have you taken your pills?” Michael asks right away, like there’s nothing more important than a man’s pills. 

“I proxed Michael,” he says and the words break right down the middle as the sobs he’s been holding back threaten to come forth. 

“Fuck,” Michael curses comfortingly, “want me to come round?” 

“Yeah.”

There’s something trapped in Michael’s eyes when Ray answers his front door, something hurting. He wraps Ray up in a tight hug and Ray thinks Michael could be crying right now and he wouldn’t know. 

“Do you know who it is?” Michael asks, hands warm where they rest over Ray’s back. 

“Someone at the hospital, i guess.” Ray hasn’t really been anywhere else since diagnosis; not the beach, not an amusement park, not a long car ride, not anything. 

Michael seems to feel the emotions rolling through Ray’s mind, “you wanna go for a drive?” he asks, “I have this guy I need to visit.” 

“Guy?” 

“Well - uh - his dumbass thoughts are on my skin so… maybe he needs the best friend seal of approval,” Michael explains shortly, like he didn’t just announce something larger than Ray’s life will turn out to be. 

“You proxed?” Ray asks, burying his nose in Michael’s chest. 

“Yeah, he’s a dumbass.”

“When?”

“All the time,” Michael jokes, smirking, “like - I don’t know. Couple months ago.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Ray says, doesn’t ask because he knows why already. Michael’s good at sacrificing himself for other people.

“I am now… You want to?” 

Ray grins, a wide flashback of the deviousness his smile used to hold, “fuck yes.”

  
  


“Ah, Michael,” Geoff says as he answers the door and Ray stares and yes, it’s definitely Geoff. 

Geoff is Michael’s soulmate? 

“Come in. I’ll go get Gavin.” 

Or not. 

Geoff goes to move further into the light of the hallway then squints into the dark and his brow furrows, “Ray?” he asks and Michael turns to stare back at him questioningly. 

“Uh- Hey Geoff,” Ray greets, waving.

“You know each other?” Michael asks dumbly. 

“Sort of,” Geoff answers at the same time as Ray’s, “Hospital.” 

“Michael looks confused for a split second but Ray sees the exact moment when he realises something. Ray’s not sure what it is, but he sees the slight nod as his face clears. 

“Ryan,” Michael nods, not exactly sadly but empathetically at the very least. 

“Yeah.”

“So uh… how’s he doing?” Michael asks, obviously unsure about how to go about this. 

Geoff smiles, “Don’t bother Michael. We all know you’re useless with feelings.” 

Michael seems relieved but all Ray can think about is that look he keeps adopting when he looks at Ray. Like he’s being torn apart from the inside and has no idea how to fix himself. 

Michael and Geoff have fell into a conversation which is largely insults and jokes and Ray simply doesn’t know what to do with himself. He feels like he’s not even there and numbly watches the other two. Michael will be fine, he realises. When Ray’s not there anymore, Michael will have people and he’ll be fine. He won't need to fix himself, cause other people will do it for him.

Ray’s moment of clarity and something akin to happiness jolts abruptly as pain flares in his wrist. He cradles it and falls down to his knees. Michael yells something, rushing over in time to catch Ray before he falls face first onto the porch. He shivers there, feeling sort of like he’s floating until the pain radiating from where Michael’s touching him knocks him back to reality and pushes Michael away.

When he finally lifts his head up, blinking tears away, blue catches his eye from behind Geoff. Ryan’s there, same soft t-shirt from the other day and he looks unbelievably tired and worried. There’s a smaller guy standing beside him, long fingered hand resting on Ryan’s forearm like he’s keeping him from rushing to help. He’s saying something but Ray can’t hear and then Michael explodes into noise. Ray doesn’t catch a lot of it as his wrist burns away just beneath the skin until some sort of hazy realisation settles over him. He tunes back in in time for;

“We’ve got to get him to a hospital.” 

“I’m fine,” Ray interrupts, climbing woodenly to his feet. 

“Like fuck you are,” Michael snarls, already pulling his car keys out and brandishing them at the air. 

“My words just changed. That’s all.” 

Michael pauses, “I’m going to find that mother fucking dick of a soulmate and make him stop thinking about you!” 

“Don’t be ridiculous Michael.” 

“I’m not-”

“I don’t want him to stop anyway.” 

“Wha- IT HURTS YOU! Ray…” 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m dying regardless.” 

“You are no-” 

“Yes I am.” 

“No.” 

“I’m not going to get better Michael,” Ray mutters, “i’m very much fucked here and there is no getting better.” 

Everyone in the house has the same expression; an unsure mix of worry and awkwardness. 

Michael almost seem to shrink in on himself, “Yes there is,” he whispers, “you’ll get better.” 

Ray sighs, turns to look further into the house and makes eye contact with Ryan, “you’re terminal right?” 

Michael growls, “what’s that got to do with-” 

“Yes,” Ryan answers - interrupts - and Geoff sort of shuts down; he obviously hadn’t known, unlike the other guy who smiles sadly up at Ryan. 

Ryan’s eyes are locked on Ray though, “I thought you didn’t know…” 

“Not until I got here,” Ray says and pushes up his sleeve. It’s grotesque, gashes of blood and the bruised skin overlaps so much it’s almost black but not quite. Necrosis set in a long time ago. Michael gasps beside him, eyes locked on the mark Ray’d not shown him for years.

‘He knows,’ sits there small and hopeful before it shifts, syrupy and slowly and Ray hasn’t actually seen the letters shift for years but they do and Ray’s fingers claw at the sudden pain, shaking and sweating through it to watch them rearrange. 

‘...kiss him’ forms and Ray looks back up to find Ryan staring at him like he’s some kind of gift or treasure. 

“You two?” Geoff and Michael ask practically at the same time and Ryan nods but Ray’s not quite finished with his tangent from earlier. 

He swivels to face Michael again, “terminal, okay?” he yells, holding out his arm like it’s all the proof Michael should need, “there is no getting better!”

“Me and him,” he starts, pointing at Ryan, “we’re dying and the moment he goes, I go.”

“And I don’t need anymore hospital or hope because me and Ryan are soulmates apparently and fuck me, i don’t even know the guy. But if i’m dying then i’m dying with him, as his soulmate. That is how it is and now, if you could stop making all this shit worse with your optimistic bullshit - i’m gonna go get laid.”

Ryan coughs awkwardly, “actually, my meds are pretty full on - i don’t know if i can-” 

“Good,” Ray nods, “me neither. We can cuddle or some shit - I don’t care.” 

Ryan smiles then, just a small adorably charmed smile that makes Ray want to swoon like a princess in a story 

“Yeah,” Ryan says, “we can definitely cuddle.” 

  
 

“Okay, so… just hear me out okay?” 

“Sure?” Ryan asks, looking decidedly unsure about it. 

“Right, well - we’re dying - obviously. And well, i was thinking - what would it really matter if we went off our meds? Just for a bit.” 

Ryan raises an eyebrow and Ray squirms uncomfortably, “how long?”

“Long enough for them to wear off…”

“Why?”

Ray glares now, “you know why!” 

“Yeah,” Ryan admits, shrugging, “but i wanted to hear you say it.”

“Dick… but seriously, what do you think?” 

“I think you want to sacrifice our health and time left on this Earth for sex.” 

“Accurate.” 

“And I think i’m totally on board.” 

**Author's Note:**

> So, clarifying end notes. 
> 
> Being someone's soulmate in this story means, if one dies the other dies too. So, Ryan's got his cancer thing going on - and because he's got this slow death happening, Ray's got it too in the form of Widow's disease. 
> 
> And 'proxed', if you haven't read my other stories, is when soulmates get close enough for their words to change from being random thoughts to being thoughts about each other. 
> 
> (NOT CONNECTED TO THE OTHER STORIES IN THIS SERIES, JUST SOULMATE BASED)
> 
> Uhm... feel free to ask questions about anything i may have missed...


End file.
